Why building highways first won’t get us out of the jam
The public can only make transportation choices from what we have been offered. As residents of municipalities south of the Fraser, our options are still far too limited. The Province has just announced a $14 billion transit plan, but they still insist that the multi-billion dollar Gateway highway-expansion mega-project is needed and will come first. This approach only digs us deeper into debt, without solving our traffic problem. In fact, the end result will be more cars and more congestion.
Any plan aimed at containing urban sprawl and rewarding green developments will not work unless it incorporates transit right from the start – not as a possible add-on later, which is the provincial government plan announced in the 2008 budget. There are many cost-effective solutions to peak hour congestion on the Port Mann Bridge that can be implemented right away, which have not been evaluated adequately. These include:
• express buses across the Port Mann Bridge between Surrey and Coquitlam, using “queue-jumper” express lanes.
• more SkyTrain cars travelling south of the Fraser
• “low-floor” diesel railcars (as used in Europe), run on existing low-use freight railway lines
We cannot afford to wait until after new roads have been built, bridges twinned and freeways widened to tackle our region’s traffic problems. Developers are already buying up our land so that they can build more car-oriented sprawl in areas which have little or no transit provision. Without the provincial government making improved public transit their top priority the cycle can only worsen, and we will spend ever more hours stuck in traffic. We must provide reliable public transit to the fastest growing areas of the province NOW.
